May 27, 2011

SEEN & NOTED: UNITED KINGDOM — Selfridges, a high-end retailer on London's Oxford Street, has installed an interactive window display in support of Project Ocean. The interactive display on the corner of Oxford Street and Duke Street is designed to encourage donations and engage passers-by to take a proactive role in protecting endangered fish stocks. The Zoological Society of London has joined forces with Selfridges to celebrate the beauty of the ocean and highlight these important issues.

Project Ocean's "No more fish in the sea?" campaign was created by London ad agency 18 Feet & Rising in conjunction with Selfridges and includes a dynamic website, iPhone App, and interactive digital ocean created by digital specialists, Clusta. Clusta built a custom physics engine to animate the fish which powered both the interactive window and website from a single database. Selfridges' interactive window uses four 80” dnp cross-prism screens (2800 x 2100 resolution) rear projection wall matrix, custom software, and Visual Planet's interactive foil overlay. Users engage with the interactive ocean scene at street level and can text donations and watch their fish being born in real-time as their donations are received.

Audio-visual integration was provided by Paradigm. “This was the first time we had worked with Paradigm and they supported the project throughout,” said Matt Clugston, co-founder of Clusta. Paradigm also supplied the projection towers, projector mounts and mullion and screen frames for the display — as well as set-up and installation — and prior to commissioning helped arrange brightness and rig tests. Paradigm also installed portable units to cope with the heat kicked out by the four projectors.